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Episode 144 – Protect Yourself

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Apr 23, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Slam Tilt #144: COVID-19 pinball rentals, Olympic trivia, and restoration chaos with returning guest Ryan C.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast episode 144 features returning guest Ryan C from Australia discussing pinball machine rentals during COVID-19 lockdowns, personal updates from hosts Ron and Bruce, and tangential discussions ranging from Olympic condom statistics to classic pinball restoration projects. The episode covers machine rentals as pandemic entertainment, Bruce's Amazon warehouse work, Ron's new game acquisition (revealed via stream debut), and technical restoration work on games like Gametron 2, World Cup Soccer, and Quicksilver.

Key Claims

  • Ryan C has been renting out pinball machines to tournament players and community members during COVID-19 lockdowns at reduced rates

    high confidence · Ryan C directly describes renting machines within tournament community and to others, with legal agreements and weekly check-ins

  • A rented Getaway machine suffered a flipper shaft complete break-off after three service visits in three weeks, likely caused by children playing

    high confidence · Ryan C describes the mechanical failure in detail and attributes it to kids playing the machine

  • Bruce sold Catacomb from his bar location because it underperformed with casual walk-in players despite regulars understanding the rules

    high confidence · Bruce states Catacomb 'didn't do well at the bar' and explains rule complexity deterred casual players

  • Ron acquired a new game that will debut on his Twitch stream with a custom character performance element

    high confidence · Ron explicitly states the game will be revealed during a stream debut with his Stu McVicker character in costume

  • Bruce is now working at Amazon, walking 20,000+ steps per night pulling boxes at a Rochester warehouse processing 47,000 packages nightly

    high confidence · Bruce provides specific details about his Amazon warehouse job, shift times, and package volumes

  • World Cup Soccer was the first Williams pinball game to include the 'AIDS is real. Protect yourself.' message, tied to the first WPCS (World Cup Player Championship Series)

    medium confidence · Ron states he researched this and owns the first such game; group discussion confirms World Cup Soccer connection

  • There are no publicly documented Gametron machines outside the United States according to Pinside listings

    medium confidence · Ron references Pinside data search confirming all Gametron versions are US-based

  • The 2018 Winter Olympics brought 110,000 condoms for approximately 3,000 athletes, with Korean AIDS Association donating 10,000 additional sachets

Notable Quotes

  • “I almost felt like Santa Claus delivering these machines because, like, they were so happy. One, because they were bored out of their fucking brains at home.”

    Ryan C @ early episode — Captures the community benefit of pandemic machine rentals and players' isolation during lockdowns

  • “Yeah, I took people's ID and credit card information and a whole bunch of, you know, made and signed legal agreements. So there's some protection in place”

    Ryan C @ mid-episode — Demonstrates practical risk mitigation for equipment rentals; references prior gaming disappearance incidents

  • “I was not in costume, though. He's pretty good. He's pretty good, that guy. I will not break character.”

    Bruce Nightingale (about Ron's Stu McVicker character debut) @ game reveal section — Setup for Ron's planned Twitch stream debut with character performance component

  • “110,000 condoms. Holy cow! Oh! Damn! 37 condoms for athletes.”

    Ron Hallett @ Olympic trivia segment — Reaction to Olympic statistics; demonstrates the show's tangential humor

  • “It did okay first month or two, because it was new, but I can tell it was going to drive down. So you could tell I was right.”

    Bruce Nightingale (about Catacomb) @ machine sales discussion — Bruce's assessment of location game performance and rule accessibility for casual players

  • “I don't think they would have... I can do a search. I'll do a search on Pins.”

    Ryan C @ Gametron discussion — References Pinside as primary lookup database for machine rarity/location verification

  • “They actually soldered a different connector to the back of the board, and they're only using nine wires. So now I have to rewire the whole machine.”

    Ron Hallett (about Gametron 2 restoration) @ restoration segment — Example of unexpected technical complications in vintage machine restoration

  • “I think most of them have never owned a pinball machine before, so I almost felt like Santa Claus delivering these machines”

Entities

Ryan CpersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonSlam Tilt PodcastorganizationGetawaygameCatacombgameWorld Cup Soccergame

Signals

  • ?

    operational_signal: Australian collector Ryan C reports successful pinball machine rental program during COVID-19 lockdowns, renting to tournament players and community members at reduced rates with legal agreements, ID verification, and weekly check-ins to prevent theft or damage

    high · Ryan C describes 'I started off for the first week just doing it within the tournament community...I took people's ID and credit card information and a whole bunch of...legal agreements'

  • ?

    product_concern: Rented Getaway machine experienced complete flipper shaft break-off after three service visits in three weeks, attributed to children playing; represents unusual mechanical failure pattern on previously reliable location machine

    high · Ryan C states 'I've had to go to the guy's house three fucking times in three weeks. And it's been on location for two years before this and never had an issue. And yesterday, the entire flipper just broke off...the entire flip-up broke from the shaft'

  • $

    market_signal: Catacomb underperformed at bar location despite initial success; rule complexity deterred casual walk-in players even though regular players understood rules, indicating market divide between casual and experienced players

    high · Bruce states 'It did okay first month or two, because it was new, but...most people who are walking up the street, they'd be sitting there going, what's it doing now?...The regulars understood it'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Gametron 2 restoration reveals non-standard connector modifications where manufacturer soldered different connector using only 9 of 20+ available wires, requiring complete rewiring; suggests manufacturing corner-cutting or design evolution during production

    high · Ron describes 'They actually soldered a different connector to the back of the board, and they're only using nine wires. So now I have to rewire the whole machine'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.308

0:00
Okay, group. We're going to continue sharing our experiences with each other. Who wants to go first? I think I've finally cleaned myself up. Wow, that's great, man. That's really great. But, you know, just take it one day at a time. Hey! You guys were supposed to get us some beer!
0:18
Yeah. Why don't you just stop all this whining crap and break out a couple of cold ones? Mmm, cold ones.
0:26
That does sound pretty good. Guys, we've all been through a lot. We've been... Yeah, let's go. There's a bar right down the street.
0:35
Come on, what's one beer gonna do? We'll just have one, and then we'll come right back. Guys, let's try to remember why we're here, huh? Come on. You know, I bet I could drink just one and then stop. Yeah, yeah, come on. Couple tall, frosty, smooth, cold ones.
0:51
Pure and cool as a mountain stream. You know, guys, I can't take it. I need a drink. Come on. Yeah, let's drink. Okay, guys. Hold on to your centers. Remember your centers.
1:24
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, This is the Slam Silk Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Mr. Negative! That's you. You are Mr. Negative.

medium confidence · Ron cites specific Olympic statistics during trivia discussion

  • Pinstar (Gary Stern's company) made the original Gametron; Segusa Sonic later licensed and produced alternative versions with different board sets

    high confidence · Ron provides detailed technical and business history of Gametron variants and manufacturing

  • Ryan's new pinball acquisition is scheduled to arrive in California in late April and will be trucked cross-country to New York in mid-May

    high confidence · Ryan provides specific shipping timeline and logistics details for his package

    • Ryan C @ early episode — Emphasizes community-building aspect of pandemic machine rentals for new players

  • “And while you're buying, I sold the game just past hour.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ equipment transactions segment — Timing of simultaneous machine sales during pandemic period

  • “World Cup's like a, you know, it's almost like the Olympics. There's a lot of countries meeting in the same area, you know.”

    Ron Hallett @ AIDS message discussion — Context for World Cup Soccer's 'AIDS is real' message placement on a sports-themed game

    • Gametron 2
    game
    Black Rosegame
    Quicksilvergame
    Gametrongame
    Segusa Soniccompany
    Pinstarcompany
    Gary Sternperson
    Joe Juiceperson
    Pinsideorganization
    IFPAorganization
    Amazoncompany
    Stu McVickerperson
    Robert Byersperson
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Iron Maidengame
  • ?

    historical_signal: Detailed documentation of Pinstar (Gary Stern's pre-Data East company) Gametron licensing to Segusa Sonic; Pinstar version used single custom board while Segusa created different board sets for only three total game titles (~800-900 boards produced)

    high · Ron provides detailed technical breakdown: 'Pinstar originally made the first Gametron...Segusa...had a different artist do the back glass...used their own board sets...only three games of Saguasa used this board set'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Gametron machines appear to be exclusively US-based according to Pinside database; no publicly documented examples outside United States, making any non-US examples potentially rare regional acquisitions

    medium · Ron states 'According to Pinside, they're all in the U.S. There's no one that is publicly saying that they have any version of the GammaTron outside of the U.S.'

  • ?

    product_launch: Ron Hallett acquiring unnamed pinball machine with planned Twitch stream debut featuring original character performance (Stu McVicker persona in full costume); represents content strategy integration between collecting and streaming

    high · Ron states 'I bought a game, which will be revealed during a stream...the stream will be the debut of my character...I will not break character'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Co-host Bruce Nightingale transitioned from primary bar operations to full-time Amazon warehouse work (6 days/week, 20,000+ steps/night), indicating pandemic-driven operational changes or business challenges

    high · Bruce describes 'I work six days a week now at Amazon...I walk at least 20 – last night I did 22,000 steps...Last night we did...47,000 packages went through our building in one night'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Ryan's pinball machine package expected to arrive California late April with cross-country trucking to New York mid-May; reflects post-pandemic shipping delays and logistics complexity for international-to-domestic equipment transfers

    high · Ryan states 'My package comes next week. It lands in California in 427. Then it has to go cross-country in the truck. And so I'll probably be here probably like the second week in May'

  • ?

    historical_signal: World Cup Soccer identified as first Williams pinball game to include public health message ('AIDS is real. Protect yourself.'); represents early example of social messaging integration into game design; message later repurposed for COVID-19 awareness

    medium · Ron researches and confirms World Cup Soccer connection; group notes 'They've been repurposing the AIDS is real message from the Williams Games, and now it says COVID-19 is real'

  • ?

    content_signal: Ron Hallett developing Twitch character persona 'Stu McVicker' (repurposed stage name from prior performance work) with full costume, planned musical performance, and strict character commitment; indicates multimedia content strategy expansion

    high · Ron states 'He will make his debut. He will be singing...I will not break character...I have a name...The name I actually used back then was Stu McVicker'

    • 1:39
    And welcome to episode 144. Holy fuck. Yeah. A lot of episodes. But we're not alone this week. No, because we have our 50th episode guest on. Yes. He's back. He's back. and better than ever, Ryan C.
    2:00
    Welcome, Ryan. It's not Ryan C anymore. It's Ryan C-O-V-I-D-19. Yeah. You're truly potent. Just a little crony joke to start off the day. Yeah, because that will go over so well.
    2:19
    So, Bruce is like, we've got to get guests. We've got to get guests. So Bruce got us a guest. You did something. I did something. Go figure. Yay!
    2:28
    And before we get started, I just want to say happy belated birthday to George Takei. Yes. Happy birthday, George. He was born on 420. I mean, again, the coolness level of George Takei just does not end. Not at all. Is the whole 420 business, is that legal in New York? Not in New York. No, not in New York, but in certain states, yes, but not in New York. Okay. Oh, we have the Hitler governor who tries to take all of our liberties away. Soon we'll be moving to ghettos.
    3:07
    It is legal in Massachusetts, which to me is like an hour away. So just saying. Vermont too, right? Probably. Yeah, I think Vermont is also, they're pretty liberal. Things like kind of a cheap form of entertainment in these trying times, you know? Yeah. All right, moving on. Moving on. So how is it down there in Australia with your new nickname? How do people put up with that new nickname of yours? It's pretty messed up for Australia, I guess, because the entire country was on fire for the first month or so of the year, and then everyone bought masks for that, or certain people did, and then coronavirus hit and there was like no mask, no toilet paper. I mean, Australia's had it pretty good compared to the rest of the world. Yeah, I mean, I see the numbers in New York and it's just insane. Like you guys will have more coronavirus cases a day than four times the amount of people testing positive than we've had this entire time. So the scale is definitely not there, but we went into certain lockdown restrictions, I guess, earlier. than US SIDS, which I guess was annoying then, and it's very hard to kind of grasp it, I guess. I remember Jeff Jealous was over here in January, and we had the Pinball Profile World Tour at my house, and I think there was about 50 people, and we were just hanging out. And then you think about that now, and you're like, ah, we're all hugging and pegging each other on the back. You just don't do that anymore. No, now it's six feet or 1.5 meters. It's funny how everything changes. you watch a movie and someone shakes hands and you're like, ew, what are you doing? Why are you touching each other? It's like that scene in Demolition Man where they do that fake rubbing handshake. I'm pretty sure that's what's going to happen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes.
    5:04
    So we're going to be using seashells for toilet paper now? Yeah, yeah. That was a popular meme when all the toilet paper ran out. But, yeah, things are pretty good now. It's easing up, but restrictions are still going to be in place. Everyone's working from home. I got a new job recently, which is pretty hard to onboard and work remotely and try and meet everybody and having like one-on-one video conferencing meetings with everybody. Yeah, it's been pretty good. And your family's still safe and everything, lads? Yeah, family's safe. They did a weird thing where they didn't pull kids out of school for a very long time because they said, you know, it's okay for kids, and we're modeling off Singapore. They kept on, like, mentioning Singapore. But basically, yeah, all the kids are working. They're learning from home now, and, ah, man, they, like, scramble to find solutions. And my kids have, like, five WebEx meetings a day, and, like, my kid's five years old, and it's like, ah, they don't need this. And the teacher doesn't know how to, like, mute everybody. so it's like 25 year old kids talking on top of each other it's like it annoys me so much i just feel like putting my head in the camera and saying can you please just mute every kid while you talk so at least they can hear you and understand it all yeah god yeah i can't i mean yeah everyone's everyone's just scrambling and trying to pivot to find solutions you know i had more machines on location just like i don't own a bar like uh like you bruce but i saw i saw those guys in the U.S. renting out machines, and I thought, hey, that's a pretty good idea versus them kind of sitting in a bar doing nothing. So, yeah, I've been renting out my machines as well. How are you doing for, is it for friends or people that you know, or are you doing to anybody? I started off for the first week just doing it within the tournament community, because there was definitely a bunch of guys and girls that have never owned a pinball machine before, and I was kind of doing them at pretty reduced rates. So your version of the IFPA rewards pretty much. Yeah.
    7:19
    But I don't care about their rankings. They can be the world's worst players as long as they have money, right? Yes. Well, it's Australia, so the rankings are upside down. That's bad. Oh, wow. That's worse than my Ryan's COV ID joke. Yeah, so, I mean, I think most of them have never owned a pinball machine before, so I almost felt like Santa Claus delivering these machines because, like, they were so happy. One, because they were bored out of their fucking brains at home. Nothing was to go out on location and play pinball. And two, because, yeah, they've got a pinball machine in their house. So at first it was just, you know, kind of close to people in the community, and then I opened it up to other people. and I check in like every week like, hey, do you still have my pinball machine? Yeah, hopefully you're not selling it or flipping it.
    8:13
    That's my fear. Yeah, I took people's ID and credit card information and a whole bunch of, you know, made and signed legal agreements. So there's some protection in place, but the machines are surprisingly, like, you know, fingers crossed, none of them have broken except Getaway, like the only old machine. I've had to go to the guy's house three fucking times in three weeks. And it's been on location for two years before this and never had an issue. And yesterday, the entire flipper just broke off. I've never seen that happen. Has that happened to you before, Bruce, or Ron? Yeah, cracked. And chunks taken out of it. Chunks taken out of the bat. Yeah, I've never seen it completely ripped off, though. Yeah, it was just the shaft bit. Oh, my.
    9:00
    So the flip-up wasn't snapped in half. It was like the entire flip-up broke from the shaft. That's weird. It lifted itself off. I'm like, how did this happen? He's like, oh, it was my kids. Oh, God. I get a kid that makes my head cringe. God. Flop, flop, flop, flop, flop, flop. No, no, no, no. But I rented out one game myself to a local customer. I'm going to offer probably to some others maybe. What's your fear? Your fear is that they'll just be played and abused? No, no. My fear is that I actually knew somebody that was doing it a long time ago, and games disappeared.
    9:39
    Yeah. And they never got their money back, and they went through court cases and everything, and, you know, that was my fear always. So I have the legal agreement also. I have a couple legal agreements. I have IDs. I have phone numbers. I check with them every week. The one guy who has it, he's a really good customer. he comes in like, we're open six days a week, he comes in at least three times at least. Yeah. And they're the people that are really interested in it because you don't kind of realize, but that's part of their weekly routine is, you know, well, part of my weekly routine is playing pinball, but I just walk downstairs and I play my machines where you have to go out in location and then all of a sudden for the first time ever, you can't do that. Got to get you fixed from somewhere, I guess. Yeah, that's why I have at least one or two in the garage. And they're set up now. Go figure. So what have you been up to, Bruce? Working. I work six days a week now at Amazon.
    10:35
    I got in. I work from 8 to about 5. So I work. I go and leave for the house at 7, 15, 7, 30, get to Amazon around 8, and I leave at 5, and then I get home around 5, 30, and then I sleep. I stay up about 7 or 8 in the morning, and then I sleep until like 3 in the afternoon and do it all over again. What's harder, Bruce, Amazon or the bar? Well, Amazon for walking. I walk at least 20 – last night I did 22,000 steps.
    11:07
    22,000 steps is 11 miles. I feel that bad. On hard concrete. That's terrible. You've got to always be sitting, Bruce. Yeah, I know. The problem is when you're doing that, what I'm doing is actually pulling parts, pulling boxes, your Amazon box that you get delivered to everybody else in the world, I don't know. You pull the box off the conveyor belt, and you put it in special aisles. So then the stower that you pull the part from the conveyor belt then stows it into a box that gets ready to be put on a truck to go to your local house. We were like the second to last stop before it goes to the person's house. And I do that every night. Last night we did, the whole building did 47,000 packages, went through our building in one night. That's a lot. Yeah, and that's just Rochester, so I couldn't even imagine what New York City and that kind of stuff is. Oh, my God. So do you have any robot friends? Are there robots there working with you? Nope, not at all. It's all Manuel, or Manuel, I would call it. But Manuel, and there's about 50 people working there in the warehouse overnight. So it's not that bad. It's nice. Have you seen any of their mouths? Or is it everyone just wears a mask? Everyone masks. We've had masks on for about three weeks now. All right. So we have masks on. Some people have their own masks.
    12:38
    It sucks trying to do physical labor with a mask on. That really sucks. But other than that, working on games. Ron, what have you been up to? working from home. He loves working from home. I hate working from home. I hate it. Why? You're a massive introvert, Ron, so I thought this was like, this is your time to shine. Yeah, but when you're on calls all day long, when I'm working, I feel like I just want to go home because where I'm at right now isn't home. It's work.
    13:14
    It's hard to explain. I just absolutely hate it. I hate it. The sooner it can end, the better. Is your work less inefficient because you can't just kind of turn to the person next to you and sort something out? You have to schedule a call to... Not really. It's more like... And I'm also too easily distracted. Let's just say that. Pretty bird.
    13:36
    I think Ron's been surfing Pinside. Is that what's up? No. I do not use... I do not use my company's equipment to surf Pinside. but I am using the Cefu equipment for my work I'm not using my own equipment we have Citrix so I could technically just use my PC but my kitchen table is now my work area I got two monitors on there and I just I hate it I've been working on games you'll be happy Bruce I DLED'd the Black Rose Thank you. Just the, yeah, hold on. Just the pure controlled lights. The GI is still LED, and I put an OCD board in there. So now it doesn't give me seizures. It seems like a lot of money to spend on a Black Rose. Don't the OCD boards cost a couple of hundred dollars? Yes, they do. Okay. But Ron likes OCD. He's OCD himself, so it works out perfectly both ways. I like what they do. because they actually work. Let's see, I worked on that game. What else? I had multiple crap I worked on. I did some moving in preparation for another game.
    14:55
    Preparation what? So where I have, where the Spanish Eyes and the Prospector are, there's now three games. And what would that game be? You said it was a game that you had before. Well, no, Stars. I moved it over there. So now I have the three games of Chimes in a row. Oh, that's cool. It's Chime Alley, if you will. So you bought a game?
    15:20
    Oh, yes. I bought a game, which will be revealed during a stream. It's going to be great. Wow. So you were going to tell us here, though? Yes, I will, but then I'll edit it out. Okay. So for those at home, you won't get to hear this until the stream, because the stream will be the debut of my character. Well, I have a name. I guess that I could give. I'm just going to use the name I used for my stage name.
    15:48
    Seymour Butts? No. Harry Palm? Scott Strapp? No. I.P. Freely? How many other Simpsons ones can I come up with? Exactly.
    16:02
    You, Jass? That's another good one. Amanda Hagenkiss? Amanda, yeah, Amanda Kiss and Hug. That was another one. Uh, no. The name I actually used back then was Stu McVicker, which was off of Beavis and Butthead. Stu for Stuart, the kid who always wears the winger shirt, and McVicker for Principal McVicker. Okay. So I figured, what the hell, I'll just repurpose that since I've used it already. So he will make his debut. He will be singing. It's going to be great. Bruce and Ryan have heard him singing. Yes, we have. I was not in costume, though. He's pretty good. He's pretty good, that guy. I was not in costume, so there will be a costume, and it will be another character, folks. I will not break character. Mm-hmm. Okay, so here we go to the edit section now. What's the game? So Ryan and Bruce now know what the game is, but you will all know what it is when I debut it, which it's still in the car right now. I actually got it from someone I knew. That made the transaction easier because it was already wrapped up and ready to go when I got there. The transaction took less than five minutes. We both looked like we were in hazmat outfits. Yikes. I had my hat, my mask, my gloves. He comes out, he's got his mask, his gloves. I, like, tossed him the envelope with the money. It was a lot. Here's a drug deal. Here we go. Yeah, literally. That's what I said. Hurry up. Get in it. This was probably, like, a long, long time ago for you guys, but do you remember the transition from when you bought a machine and all of a sudden you were the one who knew more about pimples than the person you were buying it from?
    17:43
    A lot of times I've had that. Well, I think like the first couple of pimple machines you buy, you're like, you're kind of like, oh, so how do we do this and how do we move the machine and what's the best way to get into the car? And then after a couple, you might buy a pimple machine of someone who knows less than you and you're like, oh, I guess I have to lead. I'm not sure if I'm ready for this. But, yeah, like what you're talking about just works really well when both people know what they're doing. Bam, get it done. Yeah. Yeah, and he does this for, like, he sells games for. It's one of his side businesses. I used to play in monthly Masters tournaments with the seller, like, ten years ago. So when I saw he had the game in question, I went for it. There you go. And while you're buying, I sold the game just past hour. Whoa. Okay, past hour. What'd you sell, Bruce? I sold Catacomb. Toast? Toast is gone. It will be gone. It didn't do well at the bar, as I was telling Ron before. It did okay first month or two, because it was new, but I can tell it was going to drive down. So you could tell I was right. Yeah, once in a blue moon, you are right. Go back to the older episodes, I believe I said. Why are you putting that in the bar? No one will understand the rules. No one will play it. Actually, the regulars understood it. That was the cool thing. The regular players don't understand it. But the problem is, most people who are walking up the street, they'd be sitting there going, what's it doing now? You ever play Catacomb, Ryan? Yeah, I know someone locally who has a fully restored, like, immaculate perfect condition one, and he knows how the toast bit works at the end. But, yeah, I'm like, what do I do now? What do I do now? and I kind of asked him enough questions that he's just like, I don't know. No, you know what you do? You go through the right lane, you plunge into the right lane, and then you hit the spinner, and that's it. That's all you do. So you don't actually try and complete the toast? If you're playing that in a tournament, you're going to plunge to the right lane, and then you're going to hit the spinner. So what if you try... Okay, so does the right lane increase the spinner value? It increases the spinner value, yes. and can you ask you can't really get the ball up to the top again once you unless it hits off a pop bumper and then goes up the end lane once in a blue moon it will do that but that's about it and then the ball can if you want to get multi-ball the ball kind of like randomly goes in those yes it's not a hitable shot it's not a direct who designed this game Joe Juice I never see his name he did well he did Dragon Fist too and he did Quicksilver so you know gotta give him a pass and it's going to Wisconsin.
    20:30
    So he already scheduled STI, which is a moving company, not a disease that we talk about. STI is real. Protect yourself. Have any of you guys seen that? They've been repurposing the AIDS is real message from the Williams Games, and now it says COVID-19 is real. Protect yourself. Yeah. It's a pity that nobody's on location to actually see that. Yeah. I appreciate it. What was the first game that did that? I know this. I luckily researched this because, you know, AIDS. Is it AIDS? No, because it's really HIV, but, you know.
    21:12
    HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. Yes, we know. See? But who owns the game? I own the first game that said this? Yep. Shit. Oh, whodunit? Nope. Oh, okay. World Cup soccer? You got it, baby. Really? Okay. And that's associated with the first WPCS. Really? I guess. So AIDS came with WPCS.
    21:41
    Here you go, kids. It's the fun World Cup soccer with the cute striker, the dog. And remember, AIDS is real. Protect yourself. Mommy, what's AIDS? Your daddy gave it to me.
    21:57
    Wow. That makes sense. World Cup's like a, you know, it's almost like the Olympics. There's a lot of countries meeting in the same area, you know. It's a good message to have, I guess. Actually, they say when the Olympics occurs, well, actually, that's World Cup. I think it's the Olympics. When the Olympics occurs, the Olympic Village is just like a, like, fuck land. Morning happy village. Yeah, it's morning happy village. Everyone just athletes, fucking athletes left and right. Yeah, I wonder if it's just because, well, there's probably a lot of reasons, but do you think just athletes just like other athletes? Like they're just like, oh, yeah, you're really dedicated to. I think they're really horny for tons of training. Yeah, and then when they finally win the gold or they compete, they're like, fuck, now what do I do? Hey, there's that girl over there. There's a guy over there. I want him. I think it's during the Olympics too. Well, no, it's still because say you compete the first day and you're done. You still stay in the village the whole time because you want to be in the closing ceremonies and closing with the opening. And you've been coming over 14 years. Olympic gigolo or something? Yes. Okay. I'm just the gigolo. And everywhere I go. How did we get here?
    23:08
    He's just real to the Olympic village podcast. Okay. I have some stats. Okay. We're going to play higher or lower. Okay. Actually, wait. We have one guess each. In the 2018 Winter Olympics, this is in a cold area, and I'm pretty sure when people are cold, they're less horny.
    23:30
    Just under 3,000 athletes, okay? So just say 3,000 people. Guess how many condoms they brought in to 3,000 people over the course of however many days Winter Olympics go for. Get one guess each, and you're allowed to go over 12 is the closest. Oh, okay. Okay. 4,500.
    23:52
    Oh, God, no. I'm thinking at least 10,000. 110,000 condoms. Holy cow! Oh! Damn! 37 condoms for athletes. Oh, my God. Were they saving it for later? I mean, what the... Wow. Were they doing water balloons? They went to the Olympics, and the Korean AIDS Association donated the other 10,000. So there you go. Are they doing water balloons or something? Yeah, that's right. How do you use 37? I don't know. So I guess people aren't joking when they really say it's a massive success.
    24:34
    This is some quality pinball podcast content, I'll tell you. It is. We'll get that from other people. You can put it on your fingers. You put in anything.
    24:46
    Anyway. Here's the worst part. I'm going to go now. I'm going to the Bruce land. Here we go. This is the thing. Wait, there's figure skaters out there that are 14, 13 years old. So, you know, they're not using it. So it's biased more than to the other people like the wrestler, that kind of stuff. So they're getting more condoms than the other people. So, like the, you know, those little, you know, tenacity girls that are 14, they're going, what am I going to do with these condoms? Oh, give that to the guy over there. Give that to the girl over there. She looks like she's old enough to do this. So many kids are underage. How do they even, like, hand them into the, is it in their goodie bag when they walk into the village? Here, here's your thing. Here a box full of condoms All right One more before we close this up one more stat The actual Olympic Games right was in Rio which you know Brazilians Oh, God. I'm not sure how many athletes there are. I can't scroll down and see. 450,000 condoms. And, Bruce, this is the funny bit, only 175 sachets of lubricant. Oh, my God. Rough-biting prof. That's why we're all like walking a little weird after the next day.
    26:13
    One in two people didn't have lubricant, so... Okay. Accelerating. Like I said, I'll be debuting my Twitch character. This is why I love Ryan. God, I love him. I miss you, Ryan.
    26:34
    Oh, and shout out to Mr. Byers, Robert Byers, and his top rope pinball. Listen, brother. Check it out. See what new wrestler is coming out as, or at least his intro. And he's trying to get to the Iron Maiden wizard mode.
    26:50
    What is that called again? Run to the hills? Okay. A test. So, have either of you two ever heard of Pinball Browser?
    26:59
    Yeah. I still haven't gone over the rest of my stuff yet. What the fuck? I'm still telling you all my stories, what I've done and what I haven't done. You just know. Well, we went to me. What are you talking about? Well, I sold the game, and then I'm working on Catacomb now. Catacomb 2. Not Catacomb 2. Sorry. Let's try that. Let's try again. I'm working on now Gamitron 2.
    27:23
    Oh, my God. What a nightmare. How many wires are on the bottom of the third connector? You know, when you – okay, let's go with this. Let's try it an easier way. Bally transformer. There's three connectors. Agree or disagree? Sure, if you say so. That's exactly how it is. J1, J2, and J3. The J3 is the big monster connector. That's the, like, I think it's 20-pin, and it's the .156-size connector. They actually soldered a different connector to the back of the board, and they're only using nine wires. So now I have to rewire the whole machine. Luckily, I have the other Gamertron there to get all of it to actually work.
    28:08
    What the F? People, these freaking hackers. Was it always not working? I don't know. It was a project game. But it does boot now. That's one step. It does boot. Okay. I have no playfield lights. I have no... It's just all wacky still. I'm still trying to get through all the disaster stuff, but it did... Are you going to sell it to me so I have Australia's only GammaTron once it's finished? You're only going to have... Is there none in the... I don't think so. I don't think they would have... I can do a search. I'll do a search on Pins. I keep on talking. Yeah, but my package comes next week. It lands in California in 427. Oh. Then it has to go cross-country in the truck. And so I'll probably be here probably like the second week in May. I pack it, Ryan. You're not picking it up? I don't know, New York City.
    29:07
    Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Like if it was normal time, yes, I would have no problem going down to the docks. You notice even Ryan called it New York. Yes, I know. You didn't call it New York City. You just said New York. I say it properly because it's a stupid state. But, yeah, no, I don't want to go to New York City. So what's going to happen is I go cross-country to New York City, and then it will be trucked up and then lift-gated right to the house. And then I get to play, try to fix that game. It works. Well, it will take you not very long to get up to your standards. Why are there two listings of Gametron on Pinstar? One by Pinstar and one by Sagasa Sonic? Sagasa Sonic, yes. Sagasa Sonic is, well, Pinstar originally made the first Gametron, and they based it off of older bally cabinets, so you can actually do a conversion kit with an extra board that was sold to you from the Gametron. So you got a board, you got the play field, and you got the back glass. And you got ideas on how to do stenciling on the side of the cabinet. It was Gary Stern's company. Gary Stern's company after Stern Electronics and before Data East. And it uses a lot of different parts. It uses Wico parts. It uses Data East-Stern parts. It uses Wico drop targets, which is really terrible. They're terrible drop targets. So it uses all that kind of stuff. But the second one, Segusa, Gary was trying to make money, so he sold the playfield rights for them to redistribute and make their own playfields and back glass. And they had a different artist do the back glass. The playfield, they did change a little text, not text-wise, but font-wise and colors. But Segusa used their own board sets.
    31:09
    Ugh. And only three games of Saguasa used this board set, which was Gametron and two others after it. And I think the total game boards made games was probably like 800 to 900.
    31:23
    While the Gametron only uses one custom board, which is pretty easy to fix. Zach's done it a couple times now. But the use is mostly badly for CERN. According to Pinside, they're all in the U.S. There's no one that is publicly saying that they have any version of the GammaTron outside of the U.S. There you go. Go, baby. USA.
    31:48
    No, you find me a Cosmic Princess and we'll swap. Yeah. Do you really want one? I've played it once. It's not bad. Yeah. It's all right. I've been at my house for a little while. It's pretty. Yeah. It's pretty. Oh, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful game. Is this there? You just, yeah. There's, um, there's a, you can, they're not super rare here. Like, you can find them, but they're either, you either find them for, like, absolutely nothing. Like, someone just had it in their garage for a while, and it's like, 300 bucks, come and pick it up. And it's gone instantly. Or it's a pinball person, like, the rarest earned, Australian only, $5,000. And some of them will sell for crazy amounts, so. But, hey, no, you, I got you a pinball machine. You have to find me one first. you have to find me in Alien Star. Oh, I thought you had one. Me? No. I just have both dibs on one from Ryan Wanger. Am I the one who introduced you to that? Yeah, you're the one who introduced me. I think I did. It's Texas. Yeah. You're like, check out this game. I remember that. I'm like, check out this game. It played good, too. And it's like, this is one of those do-the-thing games. You've got to do this thing. I know. And I was just like, ah, this is just like Ron just liking old games. And then you showed me what to do. and then you're like, and if you want to get really cute, you've got like Shats the Lane and you get 50x spinner and I'm like, oh, that sounds too hard. And then I think I did it by accident, but maybe I only got a couple of spins and I'm like, oh yeah, I want this game immediately.
    33:23
    That's on my short list. That's my Gottlieb. Yeah. I had one, Ryan, but it was a roach. Yeah. I actually traded it with a paragon for the catacomb. And now the catacombs can't. So, see? I think I have pretty bad luck when I really want a game. I get to a point where I'll just buy, like, I really wanted an Ali, and I missed out on a bunch of them. So I'm just like, oh, whatever the next one is, I'm going to buy it. I don't care.
    33:52
    So I bought one and had all these issues, and I still haven't really fixed them all. I was waiting for a tech to come and do it for me because I can't be bothered anymore. And then almost immediately afterwards, all these nice examples popped up for just a tiny bit more. I just don't have the patience. I could have just sold the other ones, but, yeah. Of course, the game that's arriving for Bruce is Quicksilver. I don't think we mentioned that. We did in the last episode, but we never actually said the title of the game at any point in the conversation. Yes, no, we didn't. It's Quicksilver. Ryan has two Quicksilvers.
    34:29
    I have two stars now. Oh, that's bad. Not that we haven't done this enough on this podcast but how how freaking good is stars i finally after owning it for close to two years somehow i like it more now than i did a year ago and 18 months ago it the more you play it and you might have to for me i had to play maybe like 500 games to like truly appreciate it or maybe a thousand games i don't know how many games i played on it i play it every single day that and Metallica is the only thing I play at the moment, and I'm so addicted to it. It's the perfect game. It's so good. Love it. It's brutal. It's great. You keep on hitting that start button. That's the best explanation of that game. I'm trying the Bruce approach now. Red star, left spinner. Most people you'll see in a tournament, they'll go for the targets to get the doubler and do bonus. Bruce just goes for stars. Just always star hunting. Just stars, stars, stars, stars, stars. and what happens usually when it hits stars. Yeah, but if you don't, you flame out bad. It's definitely an all-or-nothing approach. It's all-or-nothing. I never had, like, a plan, because, like, there's multiple strategies you can do with stars, and you kind of deviate based on what you can maybe randomly hit or how lucky you get up top. But the way I play now is I don't stop playing until I hit a target score, which is 100K. But I think I'm going to change now to 150 because I've learned my game enough that I know, like, I just know, like, when you get a reject off a spinner, I'm like, oh, it's going straight down the middle, so I'm going to, like, smash the sides. I just know the game so well because I play it so much that I'm getting pretty consistent, which I thought would be impossible on stars. But my strategy is just go for the red stars and just smash the left spinner until you build up a base and then you get the freedom to go to do whatever you want from there. Because it's one shot and you have to 600 to spin, which on a nice blue dust spinner is decent.
    36:37
    That's probably still my best gaming accomplishment is the, I think I have 462 on it without the specials. Yeah. I didn't have that on at the time. That's really good. Wow. Yeah. And that was against my dad, so it wasn't like alone. So I actually had a witness. and I've never beaten it. I have specials on now, like a one-time collect special, and I still haven't beaten it. I probably never will. For a ball, you mean, right? Or a program? For a ball. Yeah.
    37:06
    So, have either of you heard of Pinball Browser? Yes, I have. You're going to explain yourself. Is it what this does? It's, I'm not interested.
    37:17
    No, it doesn't work with anything now. What do you mean, Ron? Pinball Browser, for those who don't know, it was a nice little program where you could modify, and I think it was mostly for Stern, Stern code. You could change music. So if you didn't like that, if you didn't want War Machine to play in ARC DC and you really wanted Shoot the Thrill instead, which is what it should have been, you can change it. Or you could do things like where they have all the sound delights in Guardians of the Galaxy and you wanted the real quotes, you can put them in. or you could download like a beta code when a new game comes out like well like every single Stern you know the non-release code and you can go and listen to like all the possible call outs that could possibly happen in the game before they actually implement them that's true you could do that that's how I know there's an F-bomb in my ACDC even though I've never heard it but I know it's in there he says uh oh fuck up which I've never heard playing the game but it's in there I think I possibly heard it. Yeah. Because the only other swearing is the, Holy shit, you shook me! And that one I've heard more than once. You've got the swear option on your machine. Yes, I have the, yes, the insult level. Yeah, thank you, Steve. It's always insult level, high, whatever it is. That might even be, is that in Spider-Man 2 or no? I'm trying to remember if there's this insult level. But whatever. it seems with the last couple... Yeah, it definitely is in Spider-Man. With the last couple of updates, code updates that Stern has done, Pinball Browser no longer works. That's been like a cat and mouse thing for a while. Well, supposedly, according to the developer who ever did it, they changed something fundamental that will make it not work now.
    39:10
    So is that even for current games like Guardians of the Galaxy? I guess there hasn't been an update for that. Yeah, it's just going to be for new code going forward, I believe. But it's like you got to, you know, when you do this stuff, and me and Bruce keep harping on this, you can't be too, what's the word? Greedy. Are we open about this? Well, yeah, we'll get into it. Yeah. Because when you bring your Iron Maiden to replay effects with all the disco music on it and are blasting it so for everyone to hear, including all the Stern employees that are there, and then people are charging for these special custom builds.
    39:53
    Do you think that's a problem, that people are making money off of it? Oh, yes. How would you think? And this could fuck Stern over. Think about it. Say I work for the Iron Maiden licensing crew. I work in Pittsburgh, right? And I work in their licensing department. And I see – Hey, there's a pinball tournament. Hey, there's pinball tournaments. I just happen to be the one. I worked on the Iron Maiden license. Like, oh, look at this pinball thing. Maybe it'll have that Iron Maiden there, you know, the game I worked on. And you walk in there, and you see it, like, there it is. Someone fires it up, and it plays fucking disco music. How do you think you're going to react?
    40:28
    What the fuck? I'm going to find the first Stern employee and say, what the fuck is this? Like, or if they had a different song on there, like it has, like, Iron Maiden, Iron Maiden on there. I think they definitely turned a blind eye to it. I mean, they've obviously got enough protection that the boards can't be, you know, cloned or whatnot. I think they turned a blind eye to it until it then became sort of off. It got up too much. People are trying to make money off of it. Now we have a problem. Can you imagine if you could do it on, like, a J.J.P. game where, you know, like, everyone was screaming about pirates, like, not having, you know, the video assets and the theme song? Yeah. I mean, with JTP, it's weird. You can see all the files, but you can't click on them.
    41:18
    There's an encryption type, right? There's like public key and private key or whatever it is. You probably know way more about this than I do, Ron. But what's that called? When you get the update file and you can see all the files and all the file names and their sizes, but you can't actually click on them. It just comes up with an error. It's probably a key pair and you need the other key. Like a private and a public, you need one of the keys, or you can't. And, of course, JJP would have the key.
    41:47
    So after more cool content that I will be editing out, maybe you'll hear it someday in our – if we do a Patreon, you can hear the censored parts of the podcast. Yay. Weaver Phil, who had AIDS. Oh, wow.
    42:05
    Okay. All right, so that's enough about Pinball Browser. Let's talk about the Stern bracket, the thing that everyone else did and I realized we haven't done. No, so we can actually cheat. We can cheat? Oh, no. I'm not looking at who already won because this thing is already in process. I don't care who won. This is all about us. This is about what we think. And we have our tiebreaker, which will be Ryan. Ryan will be at a tiebreak. He will provide the tiebreak. Now, again, this is the Stern showdown. and they put this on their Facebook page where you have to pick the greatest Stern game ever. And say why. And I just noticed in the actual poster they have with the bracket, they have Spider-Man in the background. Last choice. Before we start, am I basing my tiebreaker on what I like? Yes, you're perfect. Or who has the best argument? Or you know what? No, let's argue. Arguing is better. People love it when we argue. And are you basing your choices on what you guys like, or what is just better for the pinball community? What I like. And I'll tell you why it's better. Okay. Ready, Bruce? Yep, I'm more ready. All right. The first one I think is going to be easy. Lord of the Rings versus Mustang.
    43:25
    Lord of the Rings. Jackpot one! Lord of the Rings. Okay. Every game, it's... The deepest white star. Deepest. Even deeper than Simpsons? They say in some ways that there's more mo. It's a toss-up. Okay. But both games are great. I think we're going to run into an issue in our second one here. Guardians of the Galaxy versus Batman 66.
    43:52
    Batman 66 all day. Guardians of the Galaxy. It's clunky, but the rules are incredible. You said it all. It's clunky. Guardians of the Galaxy plays so much better. If I want to play a Guardians of the Galaxy, I'd rather play Metallica and have better code and better rules. Oh, stop. It doesn't play like Metallica. Wrong. It does play like Metallica. No, it doesn't.
    44:11
    I agree with the point about the code being better on Batman, but there's something about pinballs that, like, you really have to enjoy how they shoot, and Guardians of the Galaxy shoots better, and it's better for location. People enjoy playing it more. Oh, my God. No one understands your rules. My Guardians didn't do as well as my Batman. My Batman crushes it. It's probably, Bruce, because you don't have the third-party pinball browser ROM where it plays all the cool music that people enjoy. Yeah. Which, that one was free, so... Yeah, sorry. I know Batman on paper is a better game, but I enjoy playing Guardians more, so it's Guardians. Come and get your love. Come on, Bruce. Come and get... No.
    45:05
    I'd rather play Metallica any day. Game of Thrones versus Kiss. Okay, so is it pro we're going with or premium? That's kind of what I was... Let's pretend these are pros. Let's do all pros. So Game of Thrones pro versus Kiss. I'd probably go Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones always compared to Kiss. I agree. Okay.
    45:26
    Family Guy versus The Walking Dead. I don't really like either, but I'll say The Walking Dead. Everyone loves The Walking Dead. I like The Walking Dead because it is a good rule set. I hate the fucking pop bumpers on the right-hand side. I just want to shoot freaking what's-his-name Borg about that fucking design. Terrible! Do not inflict bodily harm on our designers. Ugh, fuck. I hate that fucking game. But out of the two, I will have to say Walking Dead. My pops, like, I don't think I've ever drained down the middle, and there's no mods on it. And it was a really late-run premium, so I'm not sure if they, like, tweaked something around. I'm just kind of really lucky.
    46:08
    Hey, Bruce, why do you need to take Family Guy? What's the matter with you? Come on. I love Family Guy, but Walking Dead is a better game.
    46:16
    Raymond Davidson chose Family Guy when he did his thing. Yeah, I saw that. He really likes Family Guy. And I was like, well, I guess I can't take Raven Davidson's opinions too seriously. Oh!
    46:28
    Ray Ray. Wow. Poor Ray Ray. That's the cool thing about pinball is everyone has their own opinions, right? They do. Except on this next one. Jurassic Park versus WWE.
    46:39
    Jurassic Park. Yes. No. Yes.
    46:47
    Yes. Game of the year. Yeah. All right. This one I have trouble with. X-Men versus Elvira. House of Horrors. X-Men. I like the way that one does shoot. I like the combos. I like what they did in the last run of rules. If I have to go by where the code is at now, which I have to, because there's no guarantee. I know everyone's going to, you know, why don't we make it the most incredible? It's going to be the next Batman 66. And he probably will. but where the code is right now, I have to go with X-Men. Don't you think X-Men is probably the hardest Stern game to beat the default DC on? It's like 75 million on X-Men. And my friend, his house was pretty brutally set up for two years, and Gary Stern was still number one. The worst ones are the Stern by-levels. Not Stern. The Williams by-levels from the early 80s. They have some ridiculous high scores on them. You know, 2.5 million, 3 million, 4 million, just ridiculously high scores. When they were practicing, like, making the prototypes, they just had their, like, the glass off, just like... Yeah, I mean, I heard stories about that, too. It's like, ah, yeah, this thing's like a good score. Where the scores are just obscenely high. You immediately want to go in and reset the damn thing and lower it, because you'll never get it.
    48:08
    All right, next. Iron Man versus Stranger Things. Iron Man all day. Iron Man. Okay. We're agreeing too much, man. Ripley's Believe It or Not versus Metallica. Which I think Ray picked Ripley's Believe It or Not.
    48:28
    It's just people, people when they play an excessive amount of pinball machines, just they start to like really different things. Yep. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a better game. It's just like when you play something really good thousands of times, you're going to be like, ah, I want something different. Even though a different thing is shit. If a Ripley's is set up right, it's actually a fun game until you get to the upper play field. The upper play field is such a pachinko ball thing, it's not even funny. But if you can get that inner loop on the Ripley's done right, it's a satisfying shot. It really is. It's a good play field. I remember, I mean, I know they didn't sell that many of them just because when I took the factory tour, that's what was just off the line at the time. That was the previous game. And you got the head. They were giving away the shrunken heads. Yes, I have one, too. Okay.
    49:20
    ACDC versus Transformers. ACDC. ACDC, even though it's a pro, it's still a good game compared to Transformers.
    49:30
    Man, we've got to stop agreeing here. Beatles versus the game that Ron sold. Yes. Beatles versus Star Trek. I will pick Beatles. Oh, God. Star Trek all day. Even though it's a pro. It's still got a lot of fun. What are you looking for, though? I'm looking for... It's not as fun. It's a soulless game. Just hit blasting. There's no personality to that. They got what's-his-face-in to do the call-outs after the game was done. That was never planned. No, I am going by the complete code. I'm going by the final code. Urban, is that his name? Urban, he was never in the plans of that originally. They brought him in later. And they made it better. And that's all that matters. It's a great game. Beatles, it's, you know, they tweaked Sea Witch, and it's still not worth $8,000. We're not going by price. You're going by everything. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're going by everything. No, everything. That doesn't make any sense. You're going by everything that is on the game. Don't listen to him. Don't listen to him, Ryan. Which is it? This is really hard because I fucking love Beatles. See? But I also really like Star Trek. Damn. Even though it is soulless, and I think a lot of Stern games are soulless, they don't make you feel the same way the belly Williams games of the 90s, that kick factor. And Beatles is probably the most fun pin, but I don't know.
    51:07
    I have to go Star Trek. I'm sorry. Woo-hoo-hoo! But the Beatles is a fucking amazing game I think definitely the price even if you try and eliminate it from your mindset when trying to choose it still lingers there because it like I can play it enough because no one has it It's not on location. The problem with the Beatles I have with it, and I said it before and I'll say it again, is that middle fucking spinner magnet. If they didn't have that, the game would be so much better. Yeah, it didn't necessarily need to be there. It didn't need to be there. They increased the bomb for no reason at all. Yeah, they increased the bomb on the game, and it made it not as fun to play. If they got rid of that thing, they could have kept it. Okay, no bashing. You won. Next. I still like to bash it. Yes, you do. Spider-Man versus the Monsters. Spider-Man. Speaking of a game that does have a soul, and that's why it's better than Star Trek. Okay, Pirates of the Caribbean versus the Simpsons Pinball Party. since it's been both. Yeah, even though I hate both, I'll take that one just because I like the theme way more and it's way funnier.
    52:18
    Ah, speaking of games with a soul, Deadpool versus Avengers. Deadpool. You want to talk about a game with a soul? That's like the polar opposite of Star Trek. I feel like I'm in Deadpool's world and it's weird. Are you saying that it's a 3D world on the glass? It is. It's, it's, yes, it is. Even Deadpool himself says it. What does he say? I like to think of it as a world above glass or whatever the hell it says. It's awesome.
    52:49
    Tron versus Black Knight Sword of Rage. Black Bite. Tron. Tron sucks. I still like that. That one shot wins me. That left. Which one? Through the pop-upers all the way around, upper left flipper, then to the, then to the scoop. just hitting that over and over and over. I love that. What? You go through the puffs to get that combo? Well, no. No. You go through the other.
    53:20
    It's the luck of having it. It's the luck of getting it. That's the key part of that thing. You see how you just made my point. Oh, I just made your point? Yes, because you said, oh, you go through the puff-bubbers and you make the left-hand shot and get the scoop. I like the way it feels. Like, and what was Ryan's exact response? You make that shot? No, I can make that shot. It's just the way Tron works is you can build up any amount of shot combos and then catch it out the scoop for the end of line jackpot.
    53:52
    But the easiest way for me to start it is by shooting Cora, then the side ramp, then through the pops, then the side ramp again, then catch it. And you can just keep on building it as high as it goes. David Thiel has that amazing audio. The audio is awesome. And a high pitch. Sorry, it's Tron. If you're talking about the way a game makes you feel, there's not a game that makes me feel like I'm in a different world than Tron, especially with, and not a lot of games do this. I know you guys don't like flickering lights, but when you get Zeus and the GI flickers with every switch hit and you start ripping spinners and getting the ball in the pops and you're in multi-ball. It's just, it's done in a subtle enough way that it's not overbearing for me. It's definitely Tron. Sorry, Black Knight's not a horrible game, but it's, theme matters, I guess, enough to people. And if you compare the music in Tron to the music in Dark Knight, it's night and day. Like, I want to rip my eyes and my ears out when I'm playing Black Knight. I don't want to listen to death metal kind of stuff. Hey, Timmy, Timmy, I tried.
    55:03
    Maybe they can, with the pinball browser, they can put Dark Park music in Black Knight. They can do an update to the code and release it.
    55:15
    Then we have Ghostbusters versus Star Wars comic book edition. I guess they did that edition because it's the art that doesn't suck. I think it says Star Wars slash comic. It could be either one. Star Wars.
    55:31
    Star Wars. I hate the side. Oh, I knew this would be tough for him. No. I know you hate Ghostbusters and Star Wars. I hate Ghostbusters. I hate them both. Don't worry. We'll make it in the next round. Okay. Then we have Aerosmith versus Iron Maiden.
    55:48
    Ah, Maiden. Okay. Damn, we got to stop agreeing. Okay. So now we have Lord of the Rings versus Guardians of the Galaxy. Lord of the Rings.
    56:01
    Still. the modes are so complete on that game it's fun to play it is the true storybook movie, if you want to follow a true game, that is the game if you want to follow a true game thank you for the system I'll have to give props to Carl DeAngelo for this, just watching his stream of this game and it's magnificent quality just made me like yeah, Lord of the Rings I gotta pick Lord of the Rings probably some of the best theme immersion ever it's so and you've got actual people who were in the movie yeah go figure the call outs really just stick in your head like when you lock a ball not even that when you lock a ball for two towers multi-ball yeah we need people of intelligence on this sort of massive quest thing I can't help but repeat everything that they say in my head It's so good. This is the best band in the world. Yeah. Run!
    57:07
    I didn't even realize that was Christopher Lee because I never saw any of the movies. No, it's great. Okay, next one. Have you still not, sorry, have you still not seen the movies? No. No desire. You're in isolation. I have no desire to watch that. Do it. I've been watching it for three hours. I can do it. It's a movie. No. And I hate CGI. I hate it. No. Actually, the CGI is not bad at all. I don't care. It's CGI. What else are you going to do, Ron? What are you going to do tonight? Edit this thing.
    57:37
    Which you should hear the stuff I had to cut out, man. Oh, it's just golden. All right, we got Game of Thrones, bro, versus Walking Dead. I'd rather play Game of Thrones. So tiebreaker, Mr. Ryan.
    57:54
    Game of Thrones, great game, especially the pro, but I'm going to have to go Walking Dead. Sorry. Okay. It has better moments. You can blow it up in a non-supply way.
    58:07
    Hear that, Dwight Sullivan? Picked against you. Just saying. All right, we have Jurassic Park versus X-Men. No, Jurassic Park. Then we have Iron Man versus Metallica.
    58:23
    Metallica. Yeah, I got to go Metallica. Lyman's Code. Yep. And Lyman we trust. But Lyman also worked on Iron Man, so... Very little, though. He just did a couple tidbits. It was half and half. It was him and Lonnie.
    58:42
    ACDC versus Star Trek. So we have Lyman versus what should have been Lyman. Yes. And Steve Ritchie versus Steve Ritchie.
    58:53
    I'd pick ACDC since I still have it. Star Trek. I need to disagree with this one because it's too hard. I feel like ACDC will eventually be updated one last time by Lyman to properly balance it out. How does fucking Keith Allen describe it? Like it's a pure points-based game where you're just really trying to max out your points. Yeah.
    59:25
    I think the layout of Star Trek is better. I think it's the greatest layout ever in terms of fun shooting. Everyone can play it. But I've probably got to go for ACDC with the more scoring nuances. This is the weird thing about Star Trek.
    59:41
    The scoring is so linear. You can pretty much, if you tell me what your highest score is on Star Trek, I can tell you roughly where you were in the game. Like, ah, yeah, you pretty much got to Enterprise and Mark, or you're just about to get to Enterprise and Mark. Not really. No, not really. Because I can actually go, before I go into any one of the big multiballs, I can get the double scoring with the 9, you know, going to 9.1, and you'll never know. Yeah, but you can't smash. No one's ever like, ah, man, I got 200 million in Space Jump. Like, no. Like, the most you can get is maybe like a 30 million or so in Destroy the Drill. But if you start a multiball and then you had double scoring, you don't know. But modes have a start and an end. Yes, they do. They have. Unless you can get combo on Klingon Battle. If you can combo Klingon Battle and go left, right, left, right, left, right, after getting that mode, you know, you don't know where you can start with it. But, no, wait a second. There's an option in the menu where you can say, well, like, even if I get a gold medal, like this is level one stuff, keep it going until the timer runs out. But the default setting is that, like, once you get a gold medal, I'm pretty sure you have, like, a couple more seconds left and the mode's finished. And if you're, like, on some crazy combo spree, you can get a couple more shots in there, but not more than maybe three shots after you've got the nine shots. I think it's three or four. It is three or four, yeah. But you can still blow it up.
    61:12
    Next, we have Spider-Man versus Simpsons Pinball Party. Oh, it's so easy. Spider-Man. Simpsons. Oh, you're high. You're high. I like the game. Clunk Fest. City. I like the shots. You like the clunk. I don't mind the shots, and I love the rules. I think it's deep. I love the deep. It's so deep. Stack everything. Yeah. And start multiple. I know which one I like more, but I'm going to let you guys argue this one point. Run with Spider-Man. What's the best moment in that game that makes you feel like, Oh, yeah, that was fucking awesome. For me, getting to Battle Royale, the gang's all here because that's the one I can get to, as opposed to Superhero, which I'll never see. But for those who say, you know, Simpsons, Bitball Party, the rules, there is cool, nuanced rule stuff in Spider-Man with doublers, shot doublers, and shot triplers. Triplers, I agree. No one really talks about. It's another one of Lyman's probably first times he did some of that stuff. And I think it's awesome. You want to, like, complete a mode right before you get into Battle Royale, so all the white lights flash, then you hit the right ramp to triple it, and then you get into Battle Royale, then you start getting just obscene Battle Royale super jackpots. Love it. So after you finish the modes, the next shot you hit is? Yeah, all the white lights will flash, and the next shot you hit will triple it. It will triple it, yeah. Yes, for that ball. Okay, love it. Love it. Okay, Bruce, what's the best moment? And there were a lot of good moments since... Alien Invasion. Trust me. Oh, my God. The music behind you when you're trying to get these goals and locking these balls. It's just like, you know, the whole music. And you're trying to, you know, keep on increasing. And then once you get the one, so you lock two balls. Now here comes three. You've got to do it all again. The music keeps on playing. And then it's different shots you have to light and go for. And when you get to four and five, and then when you finally beat it, oh, my God. It's just incredible. Ron, have you ever actually done it before? He's never played it. He doesn't like it. I played it in League. I hated it. Have you ever been into Alien Invasion? I would never have the endurance to play a game that long. I would just get bored. You can get into Alien Invasion in like 10 minutes if you actually went for it. First only game I never played was Right Orbit, Garage, Upper Shot. Start them out. And if you hit the mystery, you get two. Play field first, everything else second.
    63:47
    That's one of my mottos, Ron, but the code, it's a Keith Johnson thing. He can, like, turn a really average layout into a fucking amazing game. The only thing he wasn't able to do was Hobbit. Well, he did it enough. Like, if the Hobbit can't get any better, software-wise, it's just a fucking horrible layout. Terrible. Anyway, Simpsons. Oh, booted Spider-Man. That hurts.
    64:17
    Okay. I'm over it. Deadpool versus Tron. Deadpool. That's fine. Poor Ryan doesn't get his... No, it's fine. Hey, I would have probably chosen Deadpool as well. All right. Even though I like Tron more, I know Deadpool is a better game for the masses. Way better. Star Wars. versus Maiden.
    64:43
    Star Wars. Quick, ten seconds. Tell me why, Ron. Go. I like that you're always on the edge of trying to keep the multipliers up. I like the usage of the button, moving the shots around, moving the multiplier around, just trying to get everything lined up. And just the – it's always – you've got to keep hitting the bank to keep the multiplier. You've got to keep hitting the bank. My train. Ten seconds. Oh.
    65:13
    First. What? Ten seconds why I don't like Star Wars or ten seconds why I... No, that's too easy. That's a low-hanging fruit. Oh, God. We know where this is going. Maiden, I actually like the shots. The shots are really cool on Maiden. I like the music, so it's even a bigger plus for me. Plus, I think the animation on it is not that bad. I actually think it's really one of the better jobs they've done with the newer system with the animations. The LCD. Yes. Yeah. It's weird. I guess we're doing pros only, right? Yep. I was about to say, like, the warp ramp thing on Star Wars Premium Alley, it's so dumb that that shot is so small compared to Getaway. Warp ramp. Hyperspace. It's better than Star Trek. Yeah, sorry. Star Trek mode. Yeah. I don't know. Like, you play, you put someone in front of Getaway, and they hit that, the shot is just lit straight away, and the ball whizzes around. and they're like, oh, I like pinball. And they spend all the money to put it on Star Wars, and maybe one in every how many games for a noob will actually like that, and then it'll whiz around. I don't know. I have to go Iron Maiden. Sorry. Okay. Next, we have, I believe, Lord of the Rings versus Walking Dead. This is top four, right?
    66:34
    No, top eight. Top eight. It's still Lord of the Rings. I'm sorry. Lord of the Rings. Sure. All right, then we have Jurassic Park versus Metallica. Ooh.
    66:49
    That's hard. That is really hard. See, I haven't had enough time on Jurassic Park, but what I have played, it's awesome. It is awesome. It definitely shoots better. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but I don't know about... I haven't played the other one enough, though. I mean, you want to talk about moments, start sparking on Metallica.
    67:12
    It's just an old hat now. Oh, stop. No, end of the line is my favorite thing. End of the line, you know. Not end of the line. I mean, what's it called? When you get, you know. Crank it up. Yeah, crank it up. Yeah, that's what I mean. When you do crank it up, that's when I get enjoying Metallica more. That's when I'm like, okay, I get to now choose what I want to do, how I want to attack it. Do I do fade to black? Do I do, you know. So that's where I really enjoy myself. How greedy do you want to be? Exactly. Exactly the thing. Yep.
    67:43
    It's the most satisfying thing when you can be greedy and it works out, and it's heartbreaking when you leave so much on the table. You're like, oh, my gosh, that one shot there, which I didn't even go for, was worth 60 million doubles, and the ball just drained because I was, like, fucking greedy. It's the best feeling, even though you fucked it up. and I feel like that's where Metallica goes over Jurassic Park because Jurassic Park there's one complaint, the only complaint I have about that game it's too linear you're starting from the bottom and working your way up you're playing the same but there's so many different things you can do the problem is you're always starting at that same point, you're always going to try to go for so you're picking Metallica I'll pick Metallica too because I have a feeling that's what Brian would be picking anyway I have not had enough experience on Jurassic Park.
    68:38
    Yeah. I'm sure there's probably a million reasons a good player can tell you why Jurassic Park is better, but I don't know. I like the moments in Metallica, and I haven't experienced that yet. Even skipping into the wizard mode, which is cool, the precursor to the main wizard mode, very, very cool, but still doesn't give you that adrenaline rush that Crank It Up gives you. So we have ACDC versus the Simpsons Spinball Party. Well, you know what I'm picking here, and it sure as hell ain't Simpsons Spinball Party.
    69:12
    Still Simpsons. You're picking that turd again. Okay. Why do you make me choose so many different ones? That's why we got you here. This is so hard because they are polar opposite games, right? Yes, they are. One's fun, one isn't. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay, that's not fair. One has a nice play field, one doesn't. This is where, unfortunately, in my book, if you go by game to game, the rule set does not compete. And that's rare for me to say against Lyman.
    69:47
    Yeah, I mean, ACDC really is just like... It's just build up your bonus, build your bonus. It's like we just talked about with what Elwin says, the one. Yeah, which, I mean, it's kind of like you're in Crank It Up, all the time, but not as good. But the thing with ACDC is that it doesn't give you, as far as I'm aware, a real incentive to complete songs. People just, like, they might change it when you're about to get into multiball, but it's literally just stringing multiballs together, and you don't really want to stack them. You just want to, like... Left, right, left, right, ramp, going to multiball. That's all you're doing. But you can argue then that since the Timble Party is just right all the garage... Garage. We have to do a lot more for that. It's just comboing. It's just comboing in ACDC. That's all you have to do to make points. Actually, you don't have to even combo. Just hit the left ramp. Exactly. But you still have to make it right ramp once, so you have to combo at least once. If Liman Sheets eventually updates ACDC to make the song progression, like, hey, do two songs, you get this bonus. Do three songs, you get this. And then at six, there's a mini wizard mode where you can, depending on how well you did. And apparently, that's on the list somewhere. I'm pretty sure it'll come to five. Well, I would like to see at least one mode where both play fields are on. Yeah, that'd be cool. You can have a mini play field. There's one thing that Family Guy did well. You have this little mini play field, and there is a mode, you know, the Stewie's Multiball there, where you can play both of them. More like monsters.
    71:23
    Well, still, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're going to have a lower play field or a mini play field, you need to have some kind of special mode that you can play both at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, so that's why I'm picking Simpsons. I would pick ACDC if that was in there and when it eventually is a title together, but I feel like Simpsons is a more well-rounded game, even though, yeah, it doesn't shoot the best compared to ACDC. But you can say that about any game versus Steve Ritchie. Like, obviously, Steve Ritchie's game shoots better because you can backhand fucking Orbit. You know, you can backhand a left Orbit, right? Yeah. Sorry. All right. Very close. So now we have Deadpool versus Maiden.
    72:12
    Deadpool. Mmm, Deadpool. I'm not getting easy on you. Sorry. It's actually too easy, unfortunately. Okay. So for the final four. Oh, boy. The final four, we have Lord of the Rings.
    72:27
    Versus Metallica. So, Lord of the Rings. Yeah, Metallica. I was going through all four. Simpsons, Pinball Party, and Deadpool. Oh, boy. So, we have Lord of the Rings versus Metallica. Lord of the Rings. It should be those two in the final two. Steve Johnson versus Wyman. Ten of them.
    72:47
    Lord of the Rings. The music theme still keeps... And it's actually a great shooting game, which we have not brought up about Lord of the Rings. It's actually one of the few, you know, Lopez designs, you know, go-bid designs. Lopez.
    73:03
    George Lopez. Yeah, George Lopez. Gomez that actually shoot really well. It's not as clunky. It's not a clunky game. I'll say Metallica.
    73:14
    Ah, fuck you guys. Oh. Make them work. Yeah, bitches. A lot of the rings wins on so many factors, theme integration, everything. But you really can't blow up a lot of the rings without multiball, and you can blow up Metallica. I'm going to go back to you, Ron. When I was on the show really early on, it was probably episode 50, you said something which kind of stuck with me. You were like, you know, when you're playing Metallica, and, you know, what makes you feel really good about Crank It Up is, like, when you lose the ball. It's one ball. Yeah, it's like. It's not a multi-ball. You are on the edge of draining every second. He does give you, Lyman gives you a little ball saver at the beginning, but after that, you're on your own, man. But wait a second. So does From There and Back. When you play From There and Back, I know it takes a while to get there, but when you play From There and Back, the music changes, you're on a one-ball game, and you have to make the shots. Yeah, but. It's not high energy.
    74:20
    The music, you don't get that that much. So it's even more high energy. And your shots are worth so much in that game when you're doing that mode, especially if you stack it with Gollum. If you stack it with Gollum and you go into there and back, oh, boy.
    74:37
    And the music just rocks with it. It really looks like Metallica music, and I fucking play that game every day. So that proves how good that game makes me feel. So it should be these in the final two, but I've got to choose Metallica, sorry. Wow.
    74:56
    Metallica. Where do we get this guy from? Okay, so we got, what do we have now? Simpsons versus Deadpool. And speaking of Deadpool, I was watching Dr. John's stream. Dr. John and Emily, and he got to the Deadpool wizard mode, the Megabolosaurus, or whatever the hell it is. It's like a dinosaur squid thing. And I noticed it's a single ball wizard mode.
    75:26
    I've never been there yet. And I'm like, oh shit, I like it even more now. I mean, literally, that just even made it even further into the awesomeness level. And I will say Deadpool.
    75:41
    You know what I'm going with? Of course. Simpsons. it's a great game still I like Deadpool I do like Deadpool but it still needs that extra cream on the top what's the extra cream on the top I don't know it just it's just not you're in the world of Deadpool you're in the world of Deadpool but you're still it's not there you don't get the full feeling I don't honestly out of all the games these two on this side are probably some of the best at just the atmosphere I do enjoy mech suit, multi-ball, jackpot. That's it. It's done. After mech suit, multi-ball, you're going, okay, now I've got to grind it out and try to get something else. Jackpot. Like, this isn't a grind. You have to play the thing for 40 minutes to get anything. But it's a grind from the start. You knew that.
    76:31
    You're logjammed. After you do mech suit, multi-ball, you're so high up, you're going, okay, now I've got to beat these modes to get something like what you're just talking about, the single ball, multi-ball. No. At least in Simpsons, you still have all these other options. Okay. How about the multiply rule on Deadpool Do you think it a fair kind of rule No That the one thing I do not like about it You can shoot the shot and hit it Now will it sometimes hit a pop and just go up by itself Yes. But you can skillfully shoot it on purpose. But, no, it's like catacomb. I'm hoping for the bounce to help me. Oh, God. Okay. It's true. You're not hoping. If you shoot the shot well enough, it's early enough on the left flipper, you can hit it out there. I do it on mine. If I brought you to a location Oh, God, you're going to do the lame argument like, well, it doesn't work on most of them. Yours is a premium. Yours is a premium. We're going pro. That makes no difference. That part of the play field is exactly the same. Don't know about that.
    77:37
    It's really a coin toss, and as I said, it's so hard because Deadpool is out now, and it's a great game. A lot of people would agree with that. When Simpsons came out, what was coming out around it? Like, it was, like, besides... T3. Yeah, T3. Just rubbish. T3 was in the middle. T3 was, like, in the middle. Then Lord of the Rings right after that. Yeah, I think it was Simpsons, T3, and then Lord of the Rings. Poor T3. Yeah. And before that was Monopoly, what's it called, Playboy, Rollercoaster Tycoon.
    78:11
    Deadpool is, by the most fun game that Stern has released in a very, very long time that, as you said, Ron, is the opposite of soulless. Like, it has character. Yes, I agree. Totally agree with that. But if this does too, I'll give it that. Yeah. It's a coin toss because they're totally different, but I've got to choose Simpsons. I'm sorry. All right. That's fine. Only because I think Deadpool's too new and it still has that new factor to me, whereas... It does. I've owned Simpsons for four years. I agree with Bruce on one thing. It needs one more update. It does. It really does. It needs just four, just little things that, well, me and Ryan tend to be OCD, but little things like you finish a ball and there's like this delay before it does the bonus sometimes, a delay before it ends the ball. That's on the new Spike 2. Bullshit. Fix it. I know. Fix it. It does the same thing on Iron Maiden. It does the same thing. They've got to fix that shit. Doesn't that bother you, Ryan? there's these little delays when I play Deadpool like we drain and you just kind of wait oh there it goes it's like thinking about whether you drained or not yet I feel like I've lost a little bit of my OCD now with pinball I don't even like set my games up perfectly anymore because I'm like when I play on location they're so fucked and I don't enjoy playing on location compared to my home but now I just like leave my machines a little bit unleveled Yeah, well, no, it's got to be leveled. I won't replace every light, like, the second it goes out anymore, because I just have too many games. If you get to that point, you're never going to play a game. You're just going to be fixing constantly. It's the worst end of my life. I don't think it's going to get an update, though. I mean, who knows, but apparently they, like, when Deadpool came out, it was kind of panned for the software because it was pretty average, and then they just got, like, everyone working on it, like, let's make Deadpool great. and they did, but surely it's heralded enough for them to just not care about it. I give Tim Sexton full credit.
    80:15
    He's the architect, definitely. Not Tanya Gleitz? No. He said in his own interview. He brought Tim in asking about the rules, you know, some things to put in. He said it himself. Tim Sexton, he's the main reason. Deadpool. Okay, so now the two heavyweights. This is heavyweight. Again, it's Keith Johnson versus Lyman Sheets. It's George, no, not George Gomez. What am I saying? It's Joe Balser versus Borg. Metallica versus Simpsons Pinball Party. Metallica.
    80:57
    Simpsons Pinball Party. Oh, God, really? You're going to stick with it all the way? All the way. How? No. It's a good game.
    81:05
    You're saying it's literally the greatest stirring game ever made. I do. For death. But think about it. Have you ever gotten to, I don't know anybody. I'm actually going to challenge. I want to see him get all the way to, what's his name, from IE Pinball. Carl D'Angelo. Yeah, I want to see Carl get all the way on Metallica. Oh, Metallica. Okay. It's way easier on Metallica now with the new code. Yes. That line brought out. Yeah, it nerfed it a little bit. It did. But I really love Simpsons. The humor. Whenever I see a Simpsons, like Jason still has one. I go up to his and I play that first. Ugh, Bruce. Come on. Not in the game anymore. I don't think it's as good as Metallica. But you'd still hawk it up and it's the best game ever, just like Gary Stern would. So, Ryan, it's up to you. Yeah. Come on, Ryan.
    82:09
    I've got them both. Both have amazing moments. One has, I think, a better layout than the other. You think? One, you know, Metallica. One is better for noobs because they can do something simple like shoot at the middle. That's Metallica. I've had Simpsons on location for a while, and it earns very, very well, even compared to new games. And I watch people play, and they have these one and a half million games where nothing happens, and they are so happy. They're like, oh, man, pinball is so cool. And it's literally because they'll just be a stupid citizen's call-out, and it will bring them back to their childhoods. So it's kind of funny. Imagine if it had this really intuitive, nice layout for noobs. But I've got to go for Metallica. Oh, you're going for it? Oh, after all that, you're going for Metallica anyway. Hey, Bruce. well crank it up fucking fade to black with lady justice don't get me wrong you get lady justice going right before you get into fade to black and you're on the premium or the alley and you rip the spinner and you get like double jackpots for one we're on pro nah we're on premium we're on pro sorry we're on a pro for that well then Simpsons talking to Metallica Pro taking out the oh did you just change it no no no I'll go with Metallica is the grand champion the greatest stern game ever made alright so Metallica and Bruce you were on This Week in Pinball thisweekinpinball.com I was I was asked to give my opinions of the COVID-19 epidemic and how it affects pinball, a lot of other stuff. And if you notice in the article, I was last. Yeah, they seem to get progressively more negative as they went into the article. So they say Bruce for the very end.
    84:14
    Can I read a little quote? Because I copied and pasted it. Go for it. This is Bruce from the Slam Tilt Podcast. and the question was, in general, what are your thoughts on any long-term effects of the current climate on the pinball hobby? And Bruce says, long-term effects will be business failing at a huge rate, sinking 25% in the next six months, 40% after nine months. For all operators and pinball-based companies, it will be a domino effect. No money coming in will make disposable income dry up. So will new and used pinball sales. the pimple market will crash.
    84:54
    It's worse than it was in 2008. It is. Think about it. In 2008, because of the crash, it's because nobody had disposable income. And right now, people are thinking, oh, I got this $2,400, or maybe what's going to happen is somebody, I already know three local businesses that have already closed. And they're a restaurant.
    85:16
    They're done. Yeah. So this is only one month in and free businesses. We're still paying bills. I'm still paying my electric, my insurance, you know, all this other stuff. I still have loans out there I'm paying for. I still have a credit card I still have to pay some things on. I'm still paying out a lot of bills. How much am I getting in? I'm getting, luckily, some donations from people who want gift certificates, which later on I still have to honor.
    85:50
    You know, I still have nothing else coming in, but I have all these bills going out. It is eating away at cash flow for all these companies, not just my own, all these companies. Now imagine some of these companies, which are nice, they're actually keeping their staff. I could not do that. I couldn't pay for staff that are not working. So now these companies are in a business, say 15% fail. That's 15% of the jobs lost. And the job market before this was at 3.9 or 3.5, the unemployment rate. Now it's up to, what, six? It's going to go higher. When these businesses go out of business, the job market's even going to be tougher. So there goes your disposable income. There goes your money you want to spend. You're not going to want to spend money on pinball. You're going to want to spend money on your own bills. I think the thing that people don't realize is that when it's over and places are allowed to open again, like your place, Bruce, it's not going to be like a light switch was turned off. No, it's going to be worse. It's going to be a slow trickle and eventually get back up to the same speed. But that might take months.
    87:01
    It might take a year. It's going to take years because guess what? People are not going to have the money. Think about it. If you're dipping into your savings to cover your savings, most families don't in the U.S. have savings, but some do. You're going to be tapping into that. You're going to be doing other things. You might be racking up your credit card debt. So what happens when this all goes? Oh, I'm going to go down to the Silver Balls Flume and maybe have a break or two, but I'm not going to go on a big vacation. I'm not going to go this because guess what? I can't go on vacation more because I have all these bills. Some people will say, I'm going to go still go on vacation. But the money is not going to be there, and they're going to cut back. And when it cuts back, companies will suffer, everything else, and it'll just be keep on, the layoffs will happen, and unfortunately, it's going to be a domino effect.
    87:51
    First, I emailed you to donate money, and I either emailed the wrong place, or you never responded to me. You probably emailed the wrong place. But I can message you, but you can email me at the silverballsaloon, silverballsaloon at gmail.com or you can email us at slamphilpodcast at gmail.com. I will pledge. Here we go. I did. The Silver Ball. Wait, how do you spell saloon? S-A-L-O-O-N. I 100% emailed you on March the 26th. Let's look. I got my mail up right now. Hey, let me buy a voucher. Well, anyway, I'm pledging live on air because this is live. A hundred Australian dollars. That's 20 cents.
    88:40
    Give me your PayPal details and I'll send you a hundred dollar videos. I'll send it to you right now. I will never cash it in. Actually, I might cash it in when I come to you. I hope you come up with one. My wife would love to be here. Also in the article, they had some comments from Carl D'Angelo of IE Pinball who just finished his open season challenge on Big Buck Hunter.
    89:03
    He got open season, which, if you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend watching it. He put the game out, he put it on YouTube so you can watch it in beautiful 4K. His reaction when he finally does it after 536 attempts was just priceless. Is he the first person to get there? On camera, I'm sure. Okay. Carl says the question was, in general, what are your thoughts on any long-term effects of the current climate on the pinball hobby? He says, this is tough as there are so many different ways the hobby goes, depending on how well we handle this as a society. As a tournament player and director, I don't see any large-scale events taking place until a vaccine is available. Right. So by that reasoning, we won't have any tournaments this year. No. No, I don't think so, unfortunately. So you're saying that even, like, expo's not happening? I don't know. clinical trials going on right now, so who knows what's going to happen. But it's not going to be an easy, you know, it was easy to turn this light switch off and go into this shutdown stuff. When I hear all these companies and all these governments saying, well, we're going to do this, this, and this first, I don't know. I'm worried. I'm worried about my well-being. I'm worried about everyone else's well-being.
    90:23
    You know, think about it. Companies eventually are going to go like, hey, we had all these people here, and now we can run this company with only this many people. What is this company's first thing they're going to do?
    90:35
    They're going to cut people. They're going to cut maybe, they're going to say, we don't need all this. We have this 5,000 or 50,000 square foot building. Why do we have this big building? Maybe we only need a 10,000 square foot building because everyone can work from home and only a third of the staff. Let's get this. And what's going to happen? and it's just going to, just like a roller coaster, head on down. I got your message, Bruce. It's yahoo.com, right? Not dot con. You're not trying to con me. You wrote dot con. Con. There you go.
    91:09
    It doesn't even show you you read that yet. That's even funnier. All right, Bruce, this will make you feel better. I'm going to dip into the mail ball bag. Oh, that made me all happy. Okay.
    91:22
    We have an email from Brian. He says, I enjoy your podcast. I find it great that your opinions on all things pinball is ensuaved by sponsors or manufacturers.
    91:32
    I also find your pop culture references entertaining as well. Keep the podcast coming, and thank you for putting it out there. Thank you.
    91:40
    Let's see what else we have. Oh, this one. Ron's streaming stage name. Someone had a suggestion. Chris has a suggestion. How would you read the name he wrote?
    91:50
    He says, you can stop searching for a name. your new streaming stage name is... Hold on. I'll put this in the chat. If I can figure out how to do that. Yeah, you're terrible at that. Shut up. You are! No, this friggin' Skype is terrible. I'll figure it out. So I put the name in the chat.
    92:12
    Hugh... Jes... Jesquiz? A Hugh Jackman? Is that meant to be like Hugh Jackman? I'm trying to... I thought it was like jockstrap at first, but it says U-Jock-Q. Huge jockstrap. Yeah, huge jockstrap. That's what it really means.
    92:29
    It's like U, and then it's spelled U-H-U-G-H, and then J-A-S-C-O-Q-U-E. Jaws. I'm guessing he's from Australia, this guy.
    92:42
    Huge, huge jock. I thought it was a huge jock or jackstockstrap. Okay. Nice. Thank you, Chris. I'm going to have the list for all the people who donated next week. I was working six days this week. I only have to work five, so I'm going to have the list next time we come on. And it's a lot of them. I'm very grateful. Thank you for all the donations that have been coming through. Some people have actually, you know, really been generous and surprised me, and it's nice seeing people in the community helping us out. Ron, thanks. You too. Breaking news. I just saw on This Week in Timble. Hi, Jeff. I think they released a picture of everyone working like a Zoom meeting or whatever they're using, whatever software. And everyone's sitting there with their face. There's Tanya Clive. There's George Lopez is there.
    93:41
    And I guess someone Someone zoomed in. You guys on Facebook, if you zoom into Dwight Sullivan's screen. Oh, God. Is it flashing light?
    93:55
    He has mucin engine turtles in the background. Does he? Are you fucking kidding me? That's pretty funny. I mean, it's just the corner of the head box, but it's pretty funny. I see. Dwight's definitely getting fired for that. That's definitely a secret that nobody knew about. I was just there. Did he just, like, literally stick it on there? On Facebook, yeah. Oh.
    94:19
    Book in the face. Zoom in. Yeah. Dumbass. Oh, Dwight. Dwight, no. Hold on. I got another one. Uh-oh. You found something else? Well, look at Corey's setup. The picture of Corey's setup, he's got a game in the background, and it's Kiss, but it's not Kiss.
    94:47
    It's not Kiss. I don't see Gene's head. There's no Gene head in there. No, there's no head. And poor Lyman. Boy, Lyman's got a disaster downstairs.
    95:00
    Holy shit, though. Rick Nagel's a pretty good-looking guy. Look at him. Look at that smile. Oh, my. I kind of feel sorry for Rick Nagel because he does all the code for Keith's games, but, like, no one ever mentions him. It's just like, ah, Keith layout, Keith rules. It's like, yeah. Yeah, but Corey, that is not a kiss in there.
    95:23
    Well, did you see Tim's picture? It's got the Black Knight Sword of Rage cabinet, but that's not the Black Knight Sword of Rage. No. No, in there. I want to know who helps him get that play field in and out because Tim's not a big guy like me.
    95:40
    Think about it. Is he lifting that play field in and out of that game? Well, I think he just lifts it up and puts it down. No, but when you get it. Oh, no, it was delivered. But, yeah, someone brought it over there for him. Okay. I'm just saying, you know. But, yeah, that Corey set up one does not look like KISS in the background. And what do you think? Why would you have two KISS cabinets? It's such a great game. Yeah, you have two kiss cabinets. Heads up challenges. But do you see what I'm saying? There's two kiss cabinets behind him. You have to get this podcast up ASAP, Ron, because this will be irrelevant in like two or three days. It will be. Why? Are we going to pull the picture or already announce it? Because you're getting fired.
    96:28
    Stop. We've got two more things. We got a from Messenger. We had a message from Tom. It says, a silly segment idea, like a fantasy sports draft. Draft five or six pinball machines between you two of a certain type, early CERNs, Williams games, et cetera. We have picked a System 7 we're going to do when we do it. Pull the listeners. System 11. Pull the listeners who has the better collection.
    96:59
    Okay. And then Gene. Uh, when I commented how I played, oh, first time I ever played Iron Man, how I hated it. And he says how he also, he hated Iron Man when he first played it at Attorney in Portland. And he was new into pinball and was set with a ridiculous tilt. Yeah. I agree with him on that one. I was the same way when I first played it. I was like, oh my God, this sucks. But now it ended up being his first new in box. There you go. Great game. Thank you, Gene. Do we have anything else on the docket? Uh, I think that was it. Oh, no, we had the Stingray question. Hold on. Oh, yes. Let's see. Hello again. This is from Rodden. It says, hello again, Rodden Bruce. I have noticed recently, although I have owned a Stern Stingray for nearly 30 years, I know it is impossible to get triple bonus. I was also aware that it shared the same game ROM as Pinball, which does have a triple bonus. Having not seen or played a Stern Pinball in many years, was curious as to how this feature is activated and how it is not possible or inactive on Stingray. That would probably be a Scott question. Yes, we do not know, but Scott listens, and I'm sure he heard that. So hopefully Scott will have an answer for us that we can pass on to you. Yes, please do, Scott. Thank you. Hi, Scott. Hi, Zach. Hi, Steve. Hi, Jeff Jellis. Marty. I'm Marty. Hi, Marty. We stole Ryan from you.
    98:33
    So, Ryan, how did it feel to be back on a podcast in a while? How did it feel? Amazing. My dreams have come true. Your masturbation is now done. You're good for a couple weeks. What?
    98:46
    No, that's when he listens to himself after the episode. Oh, gotcha. Well, my awesome laptop just has, like, a dead pixel. It didn't have the Tharva podcast, and it has a straight green line dead pixel through it. So somehow podcasting to you guys for two hours has broken my screen.
    99:08
    It's fucked. It's a Glantz Hill podcast. We break shit. That should be our name. Yes, we do.
    99:14
    Well, thank you. Thank you, Ryan, as always. You're always welcome to come on. I enjoy you guys on the airwaves. Yeah, I was pretty upset when you fake quit, but I'm glad you... It's just a psych out. It's fine. We got more free time now. Yes, we do. That's the good thing. But we have the Slamtail Podcast. We can be reached at slamtailpodcast at gmail.com. You can also go to slamtailpodcast.com, which has all of our links in the upper right-hand corner. I will be streaming regularly, especially once I get that new mystery game that I didn't say what it was. Except when I did, which I'll have to make sure I edit out. Yes. How much other stuff do you have to edit out? Oh, yes.
    100:00
    It got kind of crazy in here. Let's just say, yeah. Just a little tidbit. I'm not sure how much Ron's going to edit out, but we talked about AIDS for at least 20 minutes.
    100:11
    AIDS. Yeah, we got to do it. Yeah, yeah. Don't even ask, folks. Don't even ask. Teenage Mutant Ninja AIDS. he's an actual turtle power thank you everybody see you next time say goodbye idiot I'm looking for a meme hold on a few seconds I'm trying to find it again as always you're looking for a meme yeah meme I heard meme also So just let me know when you're ready. You're ready. Are you ready? Okay. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Tom Hilker. We'll be right back. Oh my.
    101:32
    Oh my. I'm so glad I can edit myself out because I didn't hear what you said. Good. Damn it.
    102:20
    Oh, we can't use any of this, too. It sucks. No, we can't. I know. It's great. Oh, that's so wrong. That's so wrong.
    102:29
    There is...